Hi everyone. Sorry to be a total noob, but I just got my first PS2, mostly for DDR expansion/exercise fun, and I have no idea how to get myself set up online with a PS2 with the DNAS business shut down. I put in the disk that came with the PS2 and the first thing I get after Broadband setup is the -631 error. Everything was pretty slick with the Wii RVL-001 and xbox 360, but what do I do to set up the online account? If this is elsewhere, I looked but could not find the way, so please direct me there or advise.

Thanks for the information. The XLink tutorial talks some about disabling internet security may be necessary. What has been the experience for online gaming here? Do you have to disable firewalls and software like Kaspersky, or have people been good just lowering security to medium? Thanks!

Option #1
From what I've gathered from the forums, if you are trying to bypass DNAS and to play the online portion, you will need to bypass it by using an up and running server or using a codebreaker for the ps2.

I have yet to do this but I would love to test it out and have someone show me the ropes on this. MGSO anybody!?

Option #2
You can play LAN games via XLink Kai
This part I am more familiar with since I did a lot of troubleshooting on all Operating systems with the latest 7.4.3 build.

You need to set up your PS2 with an IP address that XLink Kai with recognize and use.
-Get the mac address of your ps2 by going to the home screen without a disc inserted and press TRIANGLE. Your mac address will be at the bottom.
-Enter the last four characters into the xlink kai ip tool to get your designated IP Address

-Within the setup utility you will enter:
--the new ip address you got from the calculator
--subnet mask 255.255.255.0
--your home gateway to your router (find this by going to command prompt in windows and typing ipconfig or ifconfig in the mac/linux terminal)
***note: the below post is from a moderator of xlink kai and suggested these settings to a member having issues. It may help if you are also having difficulties***

Before we configure XLink Kai, type your home gateway address that we found earlier into a browser url bar in order to access your modem (usually 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1).
-You need the username and password for this so if you don't know it, look on the back sticker of the modem or try: admin, admin; or admin, password. You can reset this to the default credentials by resetting the router completely with a 30 sec hold of the reset button)

Now that you are in the main router setup you need to look for UPnP and make sure it is set to ON. If you don't have this then you have to port forward. Use this link https://portforward.com/router.htm to help you with the port forwarding process. Select your router make and model and select XLink Kai from the drop-down menu. (Some people use port 30000 to port forward but I have used 59373, I don't think it matters.)

Now would be a good time to disable any firewalls that may be blocking any port traffic. I would disable it completely at the moment just so you can rule that out as an issue later on. After we're set up, I recommend reenabling these settings to the maximum settings possible without interfering with XLink Kai.

Also disable the firewall/antivirus on your OS temporarily or just allow it to accept traffic in/out on the port you used to port forward.
(Windows defender, windows firewall, kaspersky, mcafee, etc.)

Start up XLink Kai by selecting 'Start Kai' in windows or whatever the web UI application is. If you are getting an error on Linux, don't forget to mkdir /root/.xlink

When you get to the login page, select configure under the login. If you ever have a problem getting to this, there is a kaiUserConfig.txt file within the package contents that you can change the options from 0 to 1 (yes or no).

Set the port to the port you are forwarding to or if you have UPnP make it 0.

Make sure your web UI is selected not the GUI UI, deep port should be blank, web ui port 38522, disable PAT, everything else checked except auto login (just incase we have issues this will let us get to the configure option easily when it asks us to login).

Make sure your ps2 is NOT connected to your LAN.

Now sign in. (Make sure your XLink Kai computer is connected to your router or router extender via Ethernet.) If you ever get hung up on 'Requerying Orbital Mesh...' just create another username and login with those credentials.
Alternatively, you can select a different orb to connect to in the command line of windows.

At the moment, there are only two orbitals available. You can see them and their connectivity stats on the XLink Homepage and click status at the bottom right corner http://teamxlink.co.uk/

Now we are in XLink. Go up to metrics and look for 'Reachable. Wait a few seconds to a miniute and make sure there is a 'Yes' next to this. If not, you need to reconfigure something and refer to these forums, xlink forums, or follow the troubleshooter on this page http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/?go=help

Now that we are reachable, connect your ps2 to your lan network, go to lan gameplay within your game, and select a 'find game' option to send a query over your lan setup. XLink Kai should recognize this after 10-30 seconds. So go into the metrics and scroll all the way down. Your playstation2 should be there and successfully configured. If your playstation is not showing at the very bottom, ask someone here or dive into the forums and do some tinkering for your specific setup.

*Note: You must close the metrics window and reopen it to refresh. Also make sure you waiting the allotted time for your console to show up.*

Hopefully, by now you are connected and you can play lan over xlink kai.

People in other countries may need to convert their game to NTSC or PAL formats in order to play. I have not done this so anybody else that knows this process can chime in. I found this video that sums it up but I know there is better software to do that job than whats in the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPiZc99nGdY&t=742s

Hopefully this helps and anyone else trying to get up and running can follow this guide. Please, anyone else build on this so we can make an easy to understand guide so people can play!

what do you mean? as in is xlink better? The issues I run into with XLink is mostly connectivity issues; where the UI will freeze and I will have to login with another name sometimes. But once you get it going, it's really user friendly. And I haven't gotten XBS to work at all yet.